


who i want you all to see

by Anonymous



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Minor Angst, Post-Canon, Romance, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29873286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After the Last War, Echo thinks that she's finally found a sense of peace. Back on her home planet and surrounded by her closest friends, there's nothing at all that can go wrong. It's a fresh start, in more ways than one.Until, that is, Emori shows up on the beach without any memory at all, and Echo's forced to learn that fresh starts can be a little more complicated than that.
Relationships: Echo/Emori (The 100)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7
Collections: TROPED: Madness 2.0





	who i want you all to see

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Troped Madness 2.0's Qualifying Round!
> 
> Character: Echo  
> Theme: Romance  
> Trope #1: Amnesia  
> Trope #2: Tattoos

There was hardly anything left of her to bring back. 

This is the only explanation they can think of, but the more Echo thinks about it, the less satisfied she is with it. The transcended beings were capable of acts that defied all reason. In her understanding, they were basically gods, capable of drastically changing the universe with nothing more than a wave of their hands. After all, they’d saved her life and allowed her to transcend even when a bullet had torn through her chest and she’d taken the breath that she was sure would be her last. 

And yet, it seems that even gods have their limits, because no matter how sure she is that this is  _ wrong,  _ Emori still stands in front of them without any memory at all. 

It hadn’t taken long for them all to choose to leave transcendence once they were offered it, deciding to stay on Earth with Clarke and live normal lives. After everything that she had gone through, after all of her mistakes and regrets, a peaceful life with those she could trust on her home planet was all Echo could have dreamed for. It had seemed like a utopia as she reunited with her loved ones, embracing them in celebration while also collectively mourning those who could not be there with them. The ocean was calm and the air felt cool as it drifted across the beach they had all reunited on, and for one simple moment, Echo didn’t long for anything more than this feeling to go on forever. 

All it had taken was one word to shatter the peace, spoken in a voice so quiet it was barely heard over the rush of the ocean’s wind. “Hello?” 

Echo looks over at the sound, breaking away from her embrace with Niylah, eyes widening when she sees what’s going on. Emori’s appeared on the shoreline, so close to the waves that her feet are fully submerged in the water. She’s wearing only a thin dress and she holds her arms close to her chest, shivering as the breeze hits her skin. None of this matters all that much, though. All Echo focuses on is her eyes, wild and afraid, staring out at them all like she wants to make a break for it at any second. 

The longer Echo stares at her, the more clear it becomes. She’d appeared on the beach like they all had, but there are no cries of joy or hugs in reunion - no, there is only terror in her gaze. It’s almost as if she doesn’t recognize any of them at all. 

“Emori!” Murphy calls out in pure relief. He wastes no time in rushing over to his girlfriend but she does not return the favour. Instead, when he gets close to her she moves back from him, away from his open arms, staggering further into the water. The bottom of her dress is soaked but she doesn’t seem to care about that at all, instead moving into the water even further as Murphy tries again. 

“I don’t understand,” Emori’s saying, over and over, but nobody seems to be listening to her. Instead, they’re all approaching her in concern and confusion, wanting to help their friend but not knowing how to. Murphy’s still trying to get her attention but she isn’t responding as she looks at them all, her fingernails digging into the skin on her arms. She’s terrified, but she has nowhere to run. 

Echo’s the only one who doesn’t move towards her. Her feet stay planted where they are on the sandy beach. She can do nothing at all but stare at one of her closest friends with a look of growing sadness. It’s not long before Emori’s wandering gaze meets her own, and they stay locked in each other’s eyes, the voices of everyone else on the beach fading to background noise. 

She knows how Emori must be feeling right now. It’s not something she wants to admit to herself, but it’s the truth. Echo’s long since become familiar with isolation and the fear that comes from it. She’d felt it when Roan had banished her, when Octavia had denied her entry to the bunker, when she’d first gone up to space and when she’d spent five years of her life on Skyring. The feeling of being alone is one that she’s intimately familiar with, and as she watches Emori look at them all with no familiarity in her eyes, she knows that she’s feeling it, too. 

So - Echo doesn’t move. She doesn’t want to add to the fear and stress Emori’s clearly already experiencing, and when the other girl catches her eye again, she thinks she sees just a hint of relief for this. Echo nods, unsure of what else to do, but it’s enough for now. The rest can all be figured out with time. 

Even if Emori doesn’t remember anything, Echo finds herself hoping that at the very least, this moment between them will last. 

* * *

“She doesn’t remember anything.” 

The sun is just starting to set when Raven approaches the group. She’d been sitting with Emori a little ways down the beach after wrapping her thick red jacket around her shoulders and guiding her away. Everyone else had been unsure of what to do, so they’d stayed back and let Raven talk to her alone. 

Echo’s not surprised to hear the news, not after seeing how terrified Emori had been when she’d come to the beach, but her heart still sinks at the confirmation. “Nothing at all?” she asks. 

“Nothing,” Raven confirms, shaking her head. “She didn’t even know her name.” 

Murphy’s hands are curled into fists at his sides, and even from several steps away, Echo can feel how tense he is. For a moment, it looks like he’s going to say something, but then his gaze wanders over to where Emori’s still sitting on the beach, watching the ocean, and he stays silent. With a short sigh, he turns away from them all and walks down the sand in the opposite direction. Surprisingly to her, Indra’s the one who goes after him, gesturing for everyone else to give them a minute alone. 

Always a woman of action, Clarke’s the first one of them to reign her emotions in and address the situation. “Okay,” she says, “so - how did this happen? What can we do to fix it?” There’s a desperation in her eyes as she speaks, betraying the guilt that she feels. They all chose to come back and live their lives with her rather than transcend, but Echo does understand why she might feel that way. 

Raven sighs, shaking her head softly. “She died from her injuries after the bunker caved in, right?”

“Yes,” Jackson says. His hand is tightly clutching Miller’s, a constant reminder and reassurance for the both of them that they’re not alone. Yet again, Echo’s heart fills with sorrow as she catches a glimpse of Emori, sitting all by herself, completely removed from anything familiar. “She died, and then Murphy put her mind drive into his head. We all transcended after he’d done that.”

“I thought so,” Raven says. “I think - her transcendence didn’t work how it was supposed to. Her physical mind and body had already died, and we know that the dead don’t transcend. Maybe part of her was lost during the process. Maybe the mind drive technology made it impossible. I don’t know, but either way, she’s lost all her memories and I don’t think there’s any way to get them back.”

A beat of silence passes. “That’s not fair,” Miller says, narrowing his eyes. “Mind drives have memories on them, don’t they? That doesn’t make sense!”

“I don’t know, okay?” Raven snaps, clearly tired of trying to hide just how upset she is about this. “I don’t even know why they brought her here, back to Earth, because she doesn’t  _ know  _ us, so it’s pretty clear she didn’t choose this. The point is it happened, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“So - what do we do with her?” 

Levitt’s question isn’t meant to be malicious, but Echo’s never known how to quell the fire that burns in her chest, and before she realizes what she’s doing she’s walking towards him in anger. “What are you saying?” she cries, ignoring the way he holds his hands up in surrender. “What are we going to  _ do  _ with her? She’s a human being!”

“Echo,” Raven tries to interject, reaching forwards to lightly touch her arm in an attempt to calm her down. “Nobody’s saying-”

“She’s your friend, isn’t she?” Echo continues, cutting her off and turning to address the whole group. She does know that most of them aren’t against her here, but she can’t help but feel protective of Emori in a way that she’s never felt for anyone else before. “Yet here you all are, talking about her fate as if she isn’t sitting  _ right there!”  _

Clarke’s looking at her with a mix of emotion that she can’t quite name. “She is our friend,” comes her response, “but none of us have ever dealt with something like this before.” 

The feeling of fire returns to her, but this time, Echo only shakes her head and steps away from them all. “She doesn’t need to be  _ dealt  _ with,” she says, her voice low. “She needs her friends - her family. I hope you can all figure out how to do that for her soon.” 

With that, she puts her back to them and walks down the beach, towards where Emori’s still sitting. As soon as she’s put distance between herself and the rest of her friends she knows that she was too harsh with them, and that they didn’t mean what she accused them of, but as she looks at Emori and thinks about how she must be feeling to be surrounded by all of this, she doesn’t feel any need to apologize. 

Emori turns upon her approach, watching her come closer, her eyes still with the remnants of terror in them. Echo does her best not to take this personally or let this dissuade her, choosing to smile softly once she’s closer. “Hi,” she says, and then gestures to the empty sand next to her. “My name is Echo. Do you mind if I sit?”

There’s a moment where Emori doesn’t say anything at all and Echo thinks her attempts to reach out are going to be over before they even begin, but then she slowly nods. “Hi,” she says as Echo sits next to her, her voice barely more than a whisper. 

Now that she’s made it here and is sitting next to her, Echo suddenly finds herself at a loss for things to say. This is the part of friendship that she’s never been good at. She knows how she feels about Emori, and she knows that she would do absolutely  _ anything  _ to help her even if she doesn’t have a clue as to who Echo is, but putting these feelings into words that can be understood seems next to impossible. 

Rather than try and fail at that, she looks forwards and joins Emori in gazing at the ocean. “Earth really is beautiful,” she says. 

It takes a second, but then Emori nods, pulling Raven’s red jacket tighter around her shoulders. She mouths the word  _ Earth,  _ as if testing it to see how it feels, and then, despite it all, she smiles. The glow of the sunset is just beginning to illuminate the world around them but Echo thinks this moment, right here and now, is the most captivating one she’s ever been a part of. 

They sit in silence for a while, something else that Echo has never been good at, but it’s surprisingly easy with Emori at her side. This feeling of peace and serenity is one that she’s never felt before, not even with Bellamy, back when everything was fine between them. What this means, though, she isn’t sure, because Emori breaks the silence before she’s forced to try and figure it out. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, the statement jarring enough that Echo snaps her head towards her. 

“Don’t be,” she tells her, not even having to think about it. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.” 

Emori, though, shakes her head. “No, I - it’s clear that you all knew me well. That  _ you  _ knew me well,” she says. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry that I don’t know you anymore.” 

Only Emori, she thinks, would apologize for having something like this happen to her. “I do know you,” she replies before she’s even had a chance to think about it. The words feel natural, and she knows them to be completely and absolutely true. “And if you’d like, I can help you so that you know me again, too.” 

“You’d do that for me?” Emori asks, and though the sun is quickly receding past the horizon her eyes are shining. “Even if I don’t remember you, or anything from before?” 

“Of course I would,” Echo says, and once again, she finds herself completely unsure of how to express her emotions and how she feels with her words. A beat of silence passes between them while she tries to figure it out, but then she simply lets out a breath and stops trying. Rather, she reaches forwards and gently grabs Emori’s hand, hoping that the contact conveys all that she means - and more. 

Emori’s surprised at first, but then her hand relaxes and once again, she smiles as their fingers interlace. “Okay,” she says, and then, “Thank you, then. I’m looking forward to getting to know you, Echo.” 

Having no knowledge of their past or regrets, Emori looks at Echo like she’s a completely different person than who she’s come to be, but - she doesn’t mind that so much. It’s horrible and unfair what’s happened to her, but as they sit together by the ocean, the sun setting above them and their hands interlaced, Echo thinks that maybe, just maybe, a fresh start could work out for both of them. 

* * *

Echo expects the first few days to be the hardest, but surprisingly - they pass pretty easily. Emori’s shy and tentative to talk to the others at first, but after Echo’s outburst, most of her friends approach her first and do their best to form a connection. Echo’s happy that they’re all doing their best to spend time with her, she is, but in the moments she doesn’t get to stay by Emori’s side she finds herself gazing at her with what Raven tells her can only be  _ longing.  _

“What’s up with that, anyway?” Raven’s working on the shelter with her one morning, about a week after they’d all arrived back on Earth, when she asks this.

“With what?” Echo asks, though she knows perfectly well where this is going. After all, she’d just been staring at Emori across the beach, where the other woman is engaged in a lively conversation with Jackson. 

Raven scoffs. “You and Emori. Don’t think I haven’t noticed - that  _ we  _ haven’t noticed. I don’t know if you recall, but there’s not that many of us here on Earth. It’s pretty easy to tell when there’s something more going on.” Echo can’t disagree with this. Though nobody has outright said anything, Clarke and Gaia are spending far more time together than they probably have to. She’s also seen the way that Niylah and Octavia look at each other, and she’s pretty sure there’s something there, too. It’s hard to hide when there’s only a handful of them on the beach, so Echo’s not surprised she’s been caught. 

She pauses in her work, taking a second to think her answer over. “There’s nothing going on,” she finally settles on. “That wouldn’t be fair to Emori, not now -  _ or  _ to Murphy.” 

As if summoned, she catches a glimpse of Murphy walking up to Emori, and the look on his face is evidence enough that whatever he’s about to say to her isn’t easy. “I don’t think you need to worry about Murphy,” Raven says, looking over at the exchange as well. “You know as well as I do that he’s a good person, Echo. He understands. Besides, before all this he and Emori were constantly on the outs, anyway.” 

“Maybe,” she concedes, but she still feels somewhat guilty. “Still - that’s not what Emori needs, not right now.” 

Raven shrugs. “Have you asked her?”

“Well, no-”

“Exactly. So you don’t know that for sure.” Raven must be able to sense her reluctance, because she crosses her arms and sighs. “Emori might not remember anything from before, that’s true, but she can make new ones. She knows you for who you are now.” 

Echo bites her lip, thinking this over. “Maybe that’s true,” she says, “but it all feels too fast. I don’t want to ruin things.” 

“Yeah, well, welcome to love,” Raven says with a laugh, only pausing when she sees how Echo’s eyes widen. “You  _ do  _ love her, don’t you?” 

And this - this is something she has to think about.  _ Love  _ is something that Echo isn’t accustomed to, coming from where she has. The scars on her face prove this. She knows that she loved her people and her home, once upon a time, but that was different. That was honour, duty, and loyalty, and she knows that she loved those things because she was supposed to, not because she had any say in it. 

Up until a week ago, she would have said that her first real experience of love was Bellamy, but this isn’t strictly true. She did care for him, and she still does, and knows that she always will. After all, up on the Ring, he had been kind to her, and that was something she’d never truly experienced. She’d been willing to die for him, that’s true, but she knows she would make the same choice for any one of her friends. 

Echo’s long since become accustomed to the painful fire that burns in her chest, but when she looks at Emori, it’s replaced with a calming warmth. She watches her grow accustomed to this world that’s completely foreign to her, and she does so with a sense of pride that really is inexplicable. When she sees her smile, the joy and pure ecstasy that beats through her heart is unlike any other sensation in the world. There’s never a single moment that she doesn’t want to spend by her side. Really, there’s no way to be sure, but Echo thinks that these feelings must be at least a piece of what love is meant to feel like. 

She hasn’t said a word this whole time, but her expression must have given her away, because when she looks back at her best friend, Raven’s smiling. “I told you so,” she says, and then gestures over to the other side of the beach, where Emori’s standing alone, Murphy having long since left. “Now, go tell her that.” 

Echo hesitates for only a moment, but then she nods and with a grateful smile to Raven, begins to make her way over. When she gets close, however, her plan to finally be honest with her feelings is quickly abandoned. Emori’s standing close to the water, the look on her face showing that she’s completely lost in thought. Her wellbeing is far more important than anything Echo was or wasn’t about to say. 

“What’s on your mind?” she asks. 

Emori’s eyes widen upon her approach, momentarily startled, but she recovers quickly. “Nothing, just - something Murphy said is making me think.”

Hearing her call him Murphy rather than  _ John  _ as she always used to is unsettling, in that it’s yet another reminder of what’s happened to her. “What did he say?” Echo finally asks, well aware that she’s intruding onto business that isn’t hers to know about. Her drive to keep Emori happy, however, overrides any hesitations. 

“Nothing bad,” she says, almost too quickly. Absentmindedly, her right hand reaches up to touch her face, tracing the lines of her tattoo that stretches across her cheek. “He just said he was sorry that he couldn’t help me. And he - well, he mentioned the tattoo.”

It slowly dawns on Echo that if Emori’s lost all her memory, then she has no idea what the tattoo means anymore. “Did he?” 

“Yeah, just that he was sorry he couldn’t help me with it ‘back then,’ either,” she explains. Her hand drops from where she’s been tracing the tattoo’s outline. It’s only been a week, but if she knows its shape so well that she can follow its path without a mirror, then she must have been looking at it a lot. 

“I see,” Echo says, unsure of what else to do. 

Emori, though, turns towards her with a steadfast determination. “Look, I - I’m not stupid. I know that I’m the only one here with a mark like this. So what does it mean?”

“Emori, I-”

“Does it have something to do with this?” She holds up her left hand, the one that’s been mutated from radiation. Sometime after her stint as Kaylee Prime, she’d stopped covering it with a glove, and Echo’s been happy to see that even after all this she’d left it exposed. 

Still - the truth is that Echo doesn’t actually know. She’s definitely assumed that the tattoo was the mark of the  _ Frikdreina,  _ but then again, she’s never seen anyone else with it. Murphy’s insinuation seems to support this theory, as well, but Echo can’t definitively say. She wants to be able to tell her one way or the other, because she knows that if she was in her place, she’d want to know what her scars meant, but - she just doesn’t know. “It might,” she finally settles on. 

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Ah,” Emori says, dropping her gaze. “Well - it must, right? Why else would I have it? Why would I willingly choose to mark myself like this?”

This, Echo knows something about. “Maybe it was a sign of pride,” she says, waiting for Emori to look her in the eye again before she continues. “Maybe it was to embrace your differences. Or perhaps, it was a sign of rebellion, to show others that you had chosen your own path in life.” 

“Maybe,” Emori replies, but she still isn’t convinced. 

“The point is that you can choose,” Echo continues on. “I wish I knew why you got it so I could tell you, but here and now, it means what you  _ want  _ it to mean - and I, for one, think it is a sign of strength.” 

Emori looks at her with such fondness, it’s as if she’s holding up the sun for her. “You do?”

“I do.” 

She pauses, and then, “You said before that you wanted to help me get to know you. Is that still something you want?”

For once, it seems, Echo doesn’t have to battle with expressing how she feels. When she looks into Emori’s gaze, she sees only love reflected back at her, and she knows that all the words that could be said in this moment are already understood between them. “It is,” she says, her voice quiet and soft in a way that it’s never been before. 

“Okay,” Emori says, and then her hand is on Echo’s cheek and despite everything that’s happened, it feels not only easy, but safe. “How about we start now?” 

She pulls her in for a kiss before she can say anything about it, but Echo doesn’t pull away. Instead, she leans into it, the world around her fading away as she lets the warmth and joy of the moment surround her. As they stay in the moment, standing on the beach, it feels silly to her that she ever struggled with feeling this way. 

It’s a fresh start for them both, one without any care for memories or tattoos of the past, and Echo knows that she will never again want for anything more than for this understanding of love to last the rest of her life. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you liked it, definitely consider checking out all the other fics in the Troped Madness collection :)


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